Media Matters Smear of ICCC9 Speakers = Epic FAIL

Gotta feel sorry for the poor writers at Media Matters with their “Climate Denial Goes Vegas” attempt to smear all the speakers at the 9th International Conference on Climate Change in Las Vegas a few days ago. Their very first major wipeout was the title they chose for their smear, but they would not have had prior knowledge of how Lord Monckton was going to destroy the “denier” label there. With regard to me, Russell Cook, your humble Panel 9 “Communicating Climate Change: The Blogosphere” speaker, our friends at Media Matters made 6 errors in 4 line categories in their pathetic attempt to trash me.

Day Job: Blogger and Contributing Editor, Environment & Climate News; writes regularly about the “smear of skeptic scientists” for Breitbart.com and RedState.

The word “job” traditionally means a person receives a paycheck in exchange for doing specific tasks under the direction of a supervisor. I receive no paycheck and nobody directs the work I do in any manner. To be bluntly accurate, I’m unemployed. I’ve disclosed twice already, here and here that the Heartland Institute gives me strings-free grants. Notice how Media Matters doesn’t mention the amounts of the grants, either out of sheer ignorance or perhaps because they did the math on what I have to live on. Wait for it, at an upcoming blog post at my GelbspanFiles.com site, I will tell how my personal funding situation severely undermines any accusation about illicit money corruption worse than ever.

Heartland’s title of me as “Contributing Editor” to their Environment & Climate News was a bit of a stretch when they first started funding me, I have not actually contributed anything to their Environment & Climate News pages. We just never got around to placing a more appropriate designation there, but Heartland sure does like what I contribute to the skeptic side of the global warming issue overall, as do many others I heard from at ICCC9.

Hard to say I “regularly write” for Breitbart.com, if my last piece there was in 2011. Also, “writes for” is a phrase that can be interpreted as ‘paid to write’. I contribute pieces to RedState because I set up an account with them long ago and have permission to places pieces there in my RedState diary. I don’t receive a dime for that effort, and if you look at the dates of my pieces, I hardly fit the definition of a ‘regular’ contributor. But Media Matters at least got the bit on writing about the “smear of skeptic scientists” correct.

Industry Ties: He’s an “expert” for Heartland

Heartland has no ties straight to industry that I know of, apart from whatever donations they receive. One could make the same statement about Greenpeace. I personally have no industry ties of any description. As for the “expert” bit, I made a mild protest straight to Heartland about that last year. However, I would challenge Media Matters to find a person who has detailed more faults than me when it comes to Ross Gelbspan’s baseless accusation of corruption against skeptic climate scientists.

Climate Expertise: None

I’ve never claimed I had any such expertise. In fact, it was one of the first things I emphasized in my ICCC9 presentation, and how that was no deterrent for ordinary non-scientists who want to know why there are seemingly irreconcilable contradictions between the climate assessments of the IPCC and skeptic climate scientists. But then again, exactly what climate expertise does Ross Gelbspan, Al Gore, IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri, or Media Matters have?

He said it: “No skeptic scientists ever had an opportunity to present the myriad faults in the idea of man-caused global warming.”

IPCC scientists Michael Oppenheimer, Stephen Schneider, and Kevin Trenberth spoke unopposed a great length about man-caused global warming seven, four, and two times, respectively. No skeptic scientists ever had an opportunity to present the myriad faults in the idea of man-caused global warming.

We couldn’t ask for a more pathetic textbook example of taking a sentence out of context. But beyond all of that, poor ol’ Media Matters could not bring themselves to mention what my central effort over these last four years has been: describing how the central hero of the man-caused global warming issue, Ross Gelbspan, the ‘exposer of corrupt skeptic climate scientists’, can’t seem to keep any part of his accusation narrative straight. Heck, they couldn’t even bring themselves to link straight to my GelbspanFiles.com site.

If they did that poorly with me, it’s a safe bet not only in Las Vegas but also everywhere else that they did as badly or worse with all the other speakers at ICCC9.

8 responses to “Media Matters Smear of ICCC9 Speakers = Epic FAIL”

Their intentions are good, and preserving and promoting “the narraitive” is more important than factual accuracy. Besides, how else is the author of the MM piece going to get George Sorros to pay him to spend a week in Las Vegas?

I read the article. The comments make it clear they are preaching to the choir – lots of ignorance and appeal to authority. I noticed that for the meteorologists, they’re listed as “Experience: None.” It would be hard to find a better example of bias.

I was fortunate to be able to sit in on a sort of ‘jam session’ Joe Bastardi was having with hurricane expert Dr William Gray, as they looked at Bastardi’s laptop showing page after page graphs and maps that are used in heavy weather forecasting and all the knowledge of prior climate conditions that factors in to all of that. “Experience: None” is yet another epic assertion FAIL on Media Matters part as applied to meteorologists, but you notice the hypocrisy when our AGW friends DO appeal to their authority: “Obama media strategy includes meteorologists” http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2014/05/06/obama-media-strategy-climate-change-meteorologists/8766075/

The hypocrisy doesn’t go unnoticed by rational people. Media Matters has a long history of writing ideology based hit pieces that omit facts and spins their own reality (which has little in common with actual reality). The whole lot of CAGW activists, including Media Matters, speak out of both sides of their mouths. Meteorologists are qualified to support CAGW but unqualified to be skeptical of it. Their flock doesn’t notice the inconsistencies as they lack the attention span to remember one claim to the next.

@lorne50 Actually, there’s no anger on my part against Media Matters since their smear effort against me was so weak. If anything, I feel sorta sorry for them and I wonder if they don’t have to constantly rotate their researchers out of topics like this, to prevent those people from starting to see how MM can’t actually defend their position. Heaven help them if any of their researchers tasked with smearing someone say, “wait a minute, this guy I’m supposed to trash seems to be telling the truth.”